Excellent spyware removal tool

S

SirKenin

banned
I found an excellent spyware removal tool while I was working on a machine today. Prevx1. It does an excellent job. This computer was one of the most difficult ones I have had in a while, but I got the job done without formatting the computer.

For tools I recommend the following:

Hijackthis (which is getting pretty useless now, but still has some functionality)
Ewido
Microsoft Defender (really only quite effective if you need to remove running processes)
Prevx1
CWShredder.
Killbot
ComboFix

And for antivirus:

Avast!
Housecall by Panda.

I have found Ad-aware, Spybot, Norton, Mcaffee, PC-Cillin, etc to be essentially useless. AVG is not near as effective as I thought it was. Not even close. Avast! simply blows it away based on my experiments while surfing the web and removal from the computer. Housecall is a good backup to have, but often times virii block access to their website, so you need to run Avast! first.

This computer last night was a nightmare (and the main reason why I don't come in here...because I don't like useless posts of "how's this HJT log" when there is nothing wrong or stuff like that.

Anyways, if you are going to help diagnose problems, there are my recommendations for tools. Try them out if you haven't already.
 
Yes, Prevx1 is an excellent program. Unfortunely, it is no longer a freebie. Once it is used for cleaning purposes, a 30 day trial kicks in.

I would also recommend running your browser in a Sandbox program such as 'Sandboxie' or 'BufferZone'. Both freebies.
 
There's no one program that will ever catch "everything". AVG will still catch things that Avast will miss. I've been through that one before. Webroot's Spy Sweeper will catch things that Spybot S+D easily misses. But that's not a freeware. McAfee has been a "lost cause" for a number of years now.

The best advice to give anyone that wants to keep a system running is to get familiar with a long list of different programs since "someone" is always trying to write a new adware, spyware, virus, or other type of malware to get around the more popular security tools. You will find that things will get by PREVX found at http://info.prevx.com/downloadremove.asp and Windows Defender beta 2 easy enough.
 
edifier said:
Yes, Prevx1 is an excellent program. Unfortunely, it is no longer a freebie. Once it is used for cleaning purposes, a 30 day trial kicks in.

I would also recommend running your browser in a Sandbox program such as 'Sandboxie' or 'BufferZone'. Both freebies.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was disappointed with that too. I noticed it is quite cheap though, something like $20.00 for a one year subscription. Seeing as how it simply destroys the majority of the competition and even catches stuff that Ewido misses I can see it being worth it. I really like the feature that pops up everything that is trying to run while it is analyzing it. It gets annoying after a while, but it is very effective when trying to diagnose and repair problems.

I can't post the name of the website, because it is not a legal site, but there is one site that I test security on. It is absolutely loaded with self installing trojans, spyware and virii. Every page and every download is just chock full of them.

The point is this. AVG misses them. ALL of them. MS Antispyware misses all of them. Ewido misses all of them. Norton? Lost cause. Mcaffee? ROFL!! Avast! catches them. Every single one. As a matter of fact, it is so bad that Avast! blocks the webpage from loading.

So, I tested browsers. ALL THREE BROWSERS fell victim. Opera, Firefox and IE7 all let every single one pass. Not one of them caught the threats. This backs up conclusively what I was saying in another thread. ActiveX is no longer the threat, and Opera/Firefox are left as completely vulnerable as IE7. So, there is no reason to cripple the web by viewing it with Opera and Firefox. You are not doing yourself any favors.

Interesting, eh?
 
Prevx1 is a royal piece of crap that goes after legitimate hard drivers labeling them as "trojans". Give me a break! AVG isn't able to catch everything and neither is anything esle. While AVG often will not be able to quaranteen or remove a number of things it will come to life even when totally disabled to flag a new trojan being copied to the drive at times. Prevx1 doesn't distinguish between legitimate software and real threats when tried here.
 
That's funny. I just used Prevx1 last night and it did not identify one driver as a problem. I guess you either know what you are doing or you don't.

AVG did not catch ONE of those problems. Not one. It missed every single one and didn't even pop up with a warning. So somehow I highly doubt your assertions because I witnessed the complete opposite with my own two eyes. It might catch some of them during a scan once they are already on your computer, but what the hell good is that? The idea is to stop them from getting there and regretfully AVG failed the test miserably. To say it came as a disappointment was an understatement.
 
AVG came to life recently when still being disabled from the startup list when a trojan was being copied to the drive instantly upon reaching a new site. It was totally removed from starting up through the msconfig and still managed to flag something being copied to the drive.

Prexv1 went after hardware drivers as soon as the desktop came up after installing it. Instead of going after the usual adwares that were later removed by AdAware and Ewido it kept going after hardware drivers? It wasn't even worth finishing the trial period to later buy retail. I can imagine the full version would tear the system apart.

Gee I keep forgetting to mention that someone just mentioning how AVG spotted a trojan downloader that needed a special remover to get rid of. No "Other" program used even indicated the trojan was even there. But AVG did! :D
 
It doesn't try to clean the drivers, you nut. It pops up on the screen letting you know what is trying to run. This includes any drivers, software, malware, anything. It is extremely effective in identifying any potential problems.

Like I said, you either know what you are doing or you don't. But yes, on boot you are going to get notices from Prevx1 what is running so you can keep your eyes open for problems.

Also, either a program loads or it doesn't load. If you completely stopped AVG from loading, it wouldn't have come to life no matter what. I have no idea what you were doing, but I strongly suspect based on your past history that you didn't know what you were doing. That's the only logical explanation why it came to life. You didn't fully disable it.
 
AVG was totally removed from the startup group and services sections found in the msconfig utility and suddenly flagged a trojan copied to the primary drive upon reaching an unknown site during a search. Figure that one out. The trogan was an executable file copied to root of the drive without any registry values being created.

The only way to even start AVG up here is to double click on the desktop icon and yet it was somehow activated when that happened. Something in the trojan's own coding triggered AVG. Someone that had the resident shield active on one system requested help when AVG was the only thing that flagged the haxdoor trojan during a phising attack on one ssytem. Review the request seen at http://www.computerforum.com/59753-c-windows-system32-rxx6ot-sys-hjt-log.html
 
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